Batten assumed leadership in 1954 of two newspapers, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Virginia, parlaying those papers into a media conglomerate by acquiring other newspapers, radio stations, and television stations and establishing a cable outlet as well as the national cable weather channel. Until 2008, the company, Landmark Communications, now Landmark Media Enterprises, was one of the country’s largest privately held media companies.[4]

Batten sold TeleCable (a multi-system cable TV company) in 1995 to TCI for $1 billion[2] and the Weather Channel in 2008 to NBC Universal and two private equity firms for nearly $3.5 billion.[3]

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Batten was born on February 11, 1927 to Frank Batten, a bank auditor,[3] and Dorothy Martin Batten, the daughter of a wealthy Norfolk family.[3] After the death of his father the following year, Batten and his mother moved in with his aunt and uncle, Fay and Samuel L. Slover.[3] A Jewish native of Tennessee, Slover had taken ownership of a newspaper in Newport News, Virginia, which he sold in 1907 to buy what would become the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch.[4] Themselves childless, the Slovers raised young Frank as their own son.[4]

Batten professionalized the newspaper he inherited in 1954 at age 27,[4] and went on to acquire the Portsmouth Star, which he later merged with the Ledger-Dispatch to form the Ledger-Star.[4] During his early days as publisher of The Virginian-Pilot, Batten championed desegregation, a position not often taken in the state of Virginia during the 1950s;[4] Virginia, like much of the American South, was undergoing deep resistance to the movement. In 1960 The Virginian-Pilot received a Pulitzer Prize for articles written in support of racial desegregation.[6]

In 1965 Batten acquired The Greensboro Daily News and The Greensboro Record, adding The Roanoke Times in 1969. Together with The Virginian-Pilot, these papers made up the core of the Landmark Publishing business. Under Landmark Publishing many other papers were started and acquired, including dailies, weeklies, community papers, and military papers across the southern and western parts of the United States.

When John Coleman, former WLS-TV Chicago chief meteorologist and Good Morning America forecaster, suggested creating a 24-hour cable weather station,[5] the idea confirmed what Batten had learned at The Virginian-Pilot, that readers prioritized weather information as a primary reason for purchasing the daily paper.

The Weather Channel debuted on May 2, 1982, after 10 months in development. Although initially criticized, The Weather Channel ultimately thrived and expanded to include its sister web site, Weather.com, which receives more than 300 million visits per month.

In 2002, on its 20th anniversary, Batten co-authored The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon, recounting the creation of The Weather Channel.[7]

Frank Batten lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia with his wife Jane Parke Batten. They had two daughters, Mary Elizabeth and Dorothy, and son Frank Batten, Jr., who succeeded his father as Chairman and CEO of Landmark Communications on January 1, 1998,[13] and has been leading Sunday night Bible study group at Tabernacle Church of Norfolk.[14]

In 2007 Frank Batten was listed as the 190th richest person in the United States, according to Forbes 400, with a net worth of approximately $2.3 billion.[15]

Batten owned one of the Chesapeake Bay's largest racing yachts, the Shadow.